The Tale of Oat Cake Crag (31 page)

“What I really hate,” he said out loud, “is the idea that Caroline will be angry at Deirdre, and think that
she
is the cause of it all, when getting married was totally
my
idea, not Deirdre’s. She kept saying no, over and over again, until I finally wore her down.”

Now, Rascal was really confused.
“You are getting married after all?”
he growled. So that was what was behind all those visits to Courier Cottage! Jeremy had been visiting Deirdre. Fierce black dog or no, he told himself, he should have gone along, to keep an eye on the two of them.

The boy bent over, picked up a stone, and shied it at the hedge. “Happiest day in my life when she said yes,” he said and grinned. “Just wish we had a little more money coming in. With the cottage and all—well, it’s going to be a near thing.” He looked down at the dog and brightened even more. “But if I can sell a painting every fortnight or two, it’ll help matters considerably. And if I can just get this awful business with Caroline smoothed out, I’ll be happy.”

“Well, if you’re happy, I’m happy,”
said the dog. Still, he was doubtful. To him, it seemed like a risky proposition. But he was just a dog—what did he know?

By this time, they had reached the top of the village. Mrs. Crook was out in the yard at Belle Green, calling for Rascal, so the dog excused himself and trotted home to see what was wanted.

Jeremy himself didn’t have far to go, only to the Llewellyns’ house next door, where he was boarding. He let himself in at the back, for, like the other homes in the village, High Green Gate was never locked. Inside, it was dim and silent. Mr. Llewellyn had gone to Carlisle two days before to visit his ailing father, and Mrs. Llewellyn was probably out calling. She went out a lot in the late afternoons, and often had tea with her cousin, who was the housekeeper at the vicarage. The two of them seemed to be very close.

Still feeling unhappy about the ugly scene at Tidmarsh Manor, Jeremy wandered through the quiet rooms. High Green Gate was a pleasant house, situated on the shoulder of the hill with a view of the buildings on the other side of the street below, the joinery and the smithy and Rose Cottage and the shop that Miss Potter (in one of her books) had called Ginger and Pickles. But while the house itself was nice enough, even Jeremy, boy that he was, could see that Mrs. Llewellyn was not a careful housekeeper. The sitting room was littered with newspapers, odd bits of clothing, a plate with a stale slice of bread left on it, and various cats, most of them napping. One, an orange tabby named Treacle, had recently given birth to kittens, and was curled contentedly on a pillow, nursing them. They were being watched by a rather plump calico with an orange-and-white bib. When Jeremy came in, she looked up and meowed.

“I’ve been waiting for you, Jeremy.”
It was Tabitha Twitchit.

Jeremy sat down beside her and rubbed her ears. “What are you doing here, Tabitha?” he asked. “You belong across the street at Mrs. Lythecoe’s, don’t you?” A silly question, that, since the village cats belonged wherever they happened to sit down, which could be anywhere.

“I dropped in on my way home from Bosworth’s birthday party to visit Treacle and her new kittens,”
Tabitha said, purring warmly.
“I brought her a bit of birthday cake.”
Indeed she had, for if you looked closely, you could see traces of crumbs on the pillow where Treacle was nursing her babies. The kittens were too young to eat cake, but Treacle had enjoyed it very much.

Jeremy smiled at the mother cat and her kittens. “Nice,” he said. Thinking out loud, he added, “Maybe Mrs. Llewellyn will let Deidre and me have one of those kittens when we’re married and living in Slatestone Cottage. I’m sure there will be mice. There always are.” He was right, for every cottage in the village was staffed by at least one tribe of mice, and possibly two. A cat was a prudent investment.

“You and Deirdre are getting married!”
Tabitha exclaimed.
“Why, that’s wonderful news, Jeremy! I’m delighted to hear it.”
And she jumped into his lap and began to purr quite loudly, rubbing her face against his arm.

Jeremy chuckled and stroked her. “I guess it’s time I thought about getting some tea. Mrs. Llewellyn will probably be home late, and I’m hungry.”

At the mention of Mrs. Llewellyn, Tabitha stopped purring.
“I found something a minute ago,”
she said.
“I got up on the table to look out the window, and I saw something. I want you to have a look at it. Please.”
And with that, she put out a claw and snagged his sleeve.

Jeremy disengaged the claw. “Silly old Tabitha,” he said affectionately. “But now you must excuse me. I’m going to find something to eat.”

“Not just yet,”
Tabitha insisted, and jumped to the floor, planting herself firmly in front of him.
“It’s over here, on the table in front of the window.”

Jeremy frowned. It looked as if the cat was trying to get his attention. What was this all about? Was she wanting to show him something? The next minute, she had leapt up on the small writing table that sat in front of the window. She put her paw on a piece of paper.
“This.”
Her whiskers twitched briskly.
“Read this.”

Now, it must be admitted that our Tabitha is not much of a reader. Unlike Thackeray the guinea pig and Bailey the badger, she does not live in a library or spend her days and nights with her pretty nose in a book. However, she had been raised from kittenhood by Mrs. Abigail Tolliver, who lived in Anvil Cottage before Sarah Barwick came there. Mrs. Tolliver used to read aloud, and Tabitha loved to sit on her mistress’ shoulder and follow the words on the page as Mrs. Tolliver said them. In this way, Tabitha had learnt to read printed words, although her vocabulary was limited to the words that occurred most often. She was especially expert in words like
the
and
and
. So whilst she had an idea of what might be written on this particular paper, she wasn’t sure.

“Read this!”
she commanded again, louder.
“And tell me what it says.”

Jeremy frowned. “I don’t read people’s letters,” he said. “That’s against all the rules.” But his glance strayed to the paper, just the same, because the cat was so insistent, and—now that he looked at it—this one was so odd. It was written in pencil, on a piece of plain paper that had one rough edge, as though it had been creased and torn from a larger piece of paper.

His eyes caught the first words. “What the devil?” he muttered. And then he did something he knew he should not do, should
never
do, in any circumstance.

He read it.

And then he sat dumbfounded, for he didn’t know what to do.

At Hill Top Farm, Beatrix sat at the table, her pen in her hand, the paper in front of her. She had been a writer all her life, beginning a journal when she was sixteen, writing letters almost every day of the week, crafting the stories in her little books. Words came easily to her, phrases popped unbidden into her mind, graceful, thoughtful phrases that usually flowed readily from her pen onto the paper without any need for revision.

But not today. Not this letter. She had already made several starts, scratching out words, even whole sentences, and once balling up an entire sheet and throwing it into the fire. It wasn’t so much that she didn’t know what she wanted to say—she had already decided that. The challenge was finding the right words, for she kept thinking of how her father would turn red and sputter and how her mother would wail and take to her bed with smelling salts. And she knew very well what they would say when they wrote back to her, or to her face when she returned to London. That a country solicitor was as far beneath her as a book publisher had been, for she came from an illustrious family of “Bar and Bench.” That marriage at her age was out of the question. And that marriage was out of the question in any event, for if she married and moved to the Lakes, who would look after them? The arguments, most of them, would be the same ones that they had raised when she and Norman became engaged—except now, they were older, and the prospect of her leaving would raise even greater fears.

But at last, after many false starts, Beatrix had crafted a letter that satisfied her. Slowly, thoughtfully, she read it out loud to herself. Then she reread it and scratched out a few words.